Year 2, Day 233: Psalm 102

Psalm 102

Psalm 102 gives me a really bleak image.  Bones withering away.  Flesh withering away like grass.  Eating ashes.  Tears mingling with one’s drink.  {Ironically, my mind can’t help but going back to the story of Job!}  This is a bleak psalm.

Interestingly enough, though, the effect of this psalm on me today is one of surprise.  I am humbled by this psalm.  As any picture of me would indicate, I don’t experience my flesh withering away.  I don’t know what it is like to go through too many lean years.  I’ve had a pretty good life so far.  I really don’t have much to complain about.

I was talking to a parishioner the other day and they were speaking about an organization such as World Vision.  World Vision is one of those organizations that you can buy animals and give to people and villages in impoverished areas of the world.  You can buy egg laying chickens, milk producing cows and goats, and wool producing sheep.  As I read this psalm, I couldn’t help but to think about all those people in Africa and other places of the world who literally will know what it is like to feel their bones and their flesh withering away if they do not receive any help.

I am humbled.  God has blessed me so graciously, and how do I respond?  Needless to say, I spent some serious time today looking through a World Vision catalogue.  I need to do more of that kind of ministry in my life.

Then the psalmist turns to God.  God does not wither away.  God is not threatened by the selfishness and greed of the world.  God’s name will forever be praised!  God’s character will forever be true!  God has the same agenda yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

How neat is it to think that God cannot be threatened by the famine of the world – or the famines that are not averted on account of the greed of the world?  How neat is it to think that this God is so generous that even though people in this world may waste away, they can find life everlasting and eternal peace in this God?

That brings me to one of the final points of this psalm.  This should be our witness.  We should be out there inviting people into a relationship with this God.  We don’t need to be out there inviting people into a relationship with the football season or the local YMCA or their television or some addictive substance or some addictive behavior.  We should be letting our testimony to God be upon our lips and seen through our deeds.

God is great.  He is greater than I, for sure.  People may waste away in my presence … but nobody who is found in Him will waste away on His watch.  That is God and I will praise Him!

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